Trump's Iron Dome to Golden Dome—flimsy origins of a boondoggle
The Alaska Defense Forum, billed as “Alaska’s premier defense gathering,” is to include a 45-minute discussion Tuesday morning in Fairbanks of “Golden Dome,” a military boondoggle that deserves skepticism, not mindless cheerleading for more money.
Bob McCoy of the UAF Geophysical Institute, Interim UAF Chancellor Mike Sfraga and consultant John Conger should concede that the enterprise, based on a dubious theory, is not the best way to spend trillions of deficit dollars.
I want to deal here not with the enormous technical, political and ethical questions, but with the simplest element of this story, something that everyone can understand—the flimsy origins of the name Golden Dome.
The choice does not reveal solid planning or thought, but an intellectual void that emerged from a trademark violation and somehow manages to massage Trump’s gold obsession.
While wearing a red hat bragging that he was right about everything, Trump looked about the glittering Oval Office this week in front of reporters and boasted about his Liberace-like tastes: “There’s nothing like gold and there’s nothing like solid gold, but this this beautiful office needed it.”
Golden Dome began with Trump campaign blather a year ago. It wasn’t Chrome Dome, Teapot Dome or Tinfoil Hat Dome, but Iron Dome, the name borrowed from Israel.
It was one of 20 points in Trump’s Republican platform, written in all caps at a third-grade level: “PREVENT WORLD WAR THREE, RESTORE PEACE IN EUROPE AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AND BUILD A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY—ALL MADE IN AMERICA.”
“We will replenish our military and build an Iron Dome missile defense system to ensure that no enemy can strike our homeland,” Trump blabbed at the GOP convention last year. “Israel has an Iron Dome. They have a missile defense system,” he said. “Why should other countries have this, and we don’t?”
Size and cost are among the reasons.
Shortly after he returned to the White House, Trump signed an executive order demanding the creation of “The Iron Dome for America” on January 27.
Two weeks later, Sens. Dan Sullivan and Kevin Cramer joined Trump’s metal band by introducing the IRONDOME ACT, after their employees invented a clever name: “Increasing Response Options and Deterrence of Missile Engagement.”
Their bill declares that “the Iron Dome will deter adversaries from attacks on the homeland.”
“The IRON DOME Act dovetails with and reinforces President Trump’s historic ‘Iron Dome for America’” executive order, Sullivan said in a press release.
But Sullivan and Cramer didn’t realize that Trump’s Iron Age was almost over.
“Please note the Department of Defense has renamed this program from ‘Iron Dome for America’ to ‘Golden Dome for America,'” the U.S. Missile Defense Agency told contractors on February 24.
It may have been a trademark violation that killed the Iron Dome program, coupled with flattery of Trump’s Midas touch. But even the Golden Dome substitute may be shot down as well because the application was framed like a request for a patent, not a trademark.
“Such a rejection would be a procedural embarrassment: the federal government’s own trademark office rebuffing a trademark submitted by another federal agency,” Inside Defense reported in June.
In any case, on May 20, Trump used the gold-tinted trappings of the Oval Office to rebrand Iron Dome as Golden Dome. Sullivan and Cramer were in attendance to call him the gold standard of presidents.
The room was bright with gold-colored posters about Golden Dome showing the Lower 48—not Alaska—and one festooned with a quote from Trump himself: “This is a Very Dangerous World. We’re going to protect our citizens like never before!”
Sullivan and Cramer did not mention their “Increasing Response Options and Deterrence of Missile Engagements” act of 2025, but said they had a new idea.
“I briefed you on this before sir, on our Golden Dome Act, which we think will have, in terms of legislation, that can help cement what you’re doing right here, getting the Congress behind it. Not just with the funding but with authorization,” Sullivan said.
“So you’re continuing to lead and we really appreciate it,” Sullivan gushed.
“So my state is honored to continue to play a critical role in all of this and build on it. We’re really excited to be here. Thank you,” Sullivan said.
Asked by a reporter if military leaders had asked for Golden Dome, Trump said: “I suggested it and they all said, ‘We love the idea sir.’ The way it’s got to be right? But they want it and they wanted it badly once it was suggested. I don’t know if they ever thought they would be lucky enough to have it. But we were able to get it done and we have all the funding, so pretty much tucked away. I think most people feel it’s very important to have,” he said.
He said the system is “as close to perfect as you can have in terms of real production.” He said it would take a “little bit less than three years” to build the system and it would cost about $175 billion.
Trump was lying. The money has not been appropriated. The technology does not exist. The system is not close to perfect. No one knows how much it would cost and whether it would work. It will not be built in three years.
With Iron Dome out, Sullivan and Cramer had to invent a new word jumble for their 44-page Golden Dome rechristening.
To spell it out with first letters, they came up with words that will be little noted and not long remembered: The “Ground and Orbital Launched Defeat of Emergent Nuclear Destruction and Other Missile Engagements Act of 2025.”
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This is from the Tuesday agenda of the Alaska Defense Forum, set for the 8 Star Events Center on 30th Avenue in Fairbanks, formerly the Friends Church.